Player Recruitment  

Posted by Whirly / R00kie

People move, get ill or encounter hardships, Schedules change, babies are born, Life takes its toll and inevitably at some point your gaming group find itself looking for new blood.

This leads to the tricky situation of recruiting. Player recruitment is the responsibility of every member of the group, but as GM of the group I'm going to talk about me own concerns.

Finding new players for an existing group is not just difficult, it's dangerous. Your existing group is a fine balance of personalities, who for one reason or another get on with each other. They have differing needs, a particular view of roleplaying, their own in-jokes, and there will be social contracts in place that you're not even aware of. Adding the wrong player to this group can produce friction, upset friendships and potentially break the group up. Its therefore something which should be undertaken with care.


Finding Players

There are a number of useful online references for finding players. NearbyGamers is one of the best. Frappr Maps is also good. I'll start by contacting everyone listed on both those sites in the local area. In addition living in the United Kingdom I have the advantage of UK Roleplayers - a great resource, and there is a local forum for games in my city (I set it up myself so that the various gaming groups in the area could stay in touch with each other).

Most roleplayers at some point pass through their local gaming shops, many of them also buy comics. It’s worth checking out local gaming shops and comic shops, seeing if they have notice boards, and if they do advertising on them.

Friends who don't game may be interested in giving gaming a try. I have several work colleagues who play online games like World of Warcraft. Some of them have expressed an interest in roleplaying (normally followed by an excuse that they haven't got time for a regular weekly commitment unfortunately). Talk about gaming. If you don't talk about gaming you'll never find out if there are other gamers you deal with on a daily basis. You could see gamers every day and never realise.

The most important thing is to be active. Roleplayers won’t just come to you in your time of need. Unless you advertise your need for players, and talk about your gaming you wont find people. Each day we deal with dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. Each of those people is a either a hidden gamer or has the potential to be a gamer.


Assessing Players

Okay. Lets assume I've found a potential player. How do I know if I should let this stranger join my game? Will they be a good fit? Can I rely on them? I’m going to be picky. This is someone I'm going to hopefully be playing with for some time.

To begin with I need to know a little about them. Depending on the method by which I made contact with them I might phone or email him (or her). I'll tell them a little about my group, what we play, when we play and who we are (in general terms - nothing which will allow him to identify individual players). Then I'll find out what sort of group they are looking for, and ask whether this meets their expectations.

The next step is meeting them in person. I'm a little nervous about this stage. I'm not exaggerating when I say a gamer followed me and a friend home on foot from a comic shop (he followed us over 4 miles) because he overheard us talking about roleplaying. Thankfully he turned out to be harmless and friendly if a little obsessive. We told him about a local gaming club, he joined a game, and later dropped out when he discovered girls. You'll be pleased to know he grew up to be a really great guy, and later rediscovered roleplaying. The experience has taught me to be weary though. The next person to follow me home may be less 'harmless'. So - 'meet them'. I'm going to suggest that when you meet a new player for the first time it should be in a public place, somewhere quiet enough to talk and somewhere comfortable. Coffee shops are a good choice, but I favour a local bar thats got really comfortable couches and serves great coffee. A poor choice would be the local gaming sh

So what do I ask them? Well initially anything except roleplaying. If they are right for the group you'll be able to happily chat with them about life outside of gaming. I don't know about other groups, but my group meet for barbeques, to go to the cinema together, chat before and after games (often during if I cant keep them on track) and are happy to do favours for each other. At this point I'm not recruiting a gamer - I'm recruiting a potential member in a circle of friends.


Working players into the group

The first game with the group is potentially difficult. If you have a long running campaign the built up backstory can be potentially overwhelming for a new player. They'll be nervous and the other players won’t really get to see them at their best. There are various ways you might get around this, but I would suggest your first game with the new player either be a board game with roleplaying elements, or a short one-off convention length game. That way the new player is not at a disadvantage. You can work him into your campaign later - this is his chance to meet the group and you don’t want to detract from it. Like the first meeting I would suggest doing this in a neutral location. If this meeting goes well then you can start trading details and inviting them to real gaming sessions.


Summary

These are all thoughts based on my previous experience of recruiting players. My gaming group is now once again short of players and I'm back at the start of the recruitment process. I normally view this as a three stage process: Find the gamer, assess the gamer and introduce the gamer to the group. It’s an active process, and it involves talking to potential gamers and non-gamers about gaming. It’s also something I do with care since the wrong gamer will not work with my group and I've had experience with strange gamers before. I'll keep you updated on how recruitment goes this time.

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Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies flawed?  

Posted by Whirly / R00kie in , ,


S7SHardcoverCover220
Originally uploaded by Whirlmeister
I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies (henceforth refered to as S7S) is flawed. Flawed, but easily fixible. In fact the fix is so minor I'm surprised no one commented in playtesting.

S7S uses task resolution. Most tasks are resolved as challenges (any non-trivial task that a character is confronted with, where therewould be only mild consequences for failure) although significant high-drama, high-threat task are resolved as Duels. I'm going to discus the problem looking at challenges although the problem is just as true for duels. Its just easier to only have to discus one set of mechanics.


Challenges are resolved as a single roll. The player announces what they are doing. In one of the examples a player claims he is 'trying to charm a maid into letting him into the Countess Erzay’s townhouse'. The GM sets a difficulty, the player rolls, and succeed or fail the player narrates the outcome.

In most of the examples in the book the players Intent is clear, but it isn't always. In another example the player states that his character will 'attack the guards.' We have no idea if his intent is to kill them, to knock them unconscious, to distract them and keep them from noticing something else, or even to enrage them so they will throw him in jail. The GM at this point sets the difficulty and the player rolls.

There are two issues here. Firstly without knowing the players intent it is impossible to set a sensible difficulty on the task, and secondly without knowing what the intent was its impossible to know if the players 'failure' narration actually has the player failing to meet his intent.

The simple fix for this issue is to borrow a little from Luke Crane's three roleplaying games. Before any dice are rolled the GM and player both need to have agreed the task, the intent and the consequences of failure (the stakes). The task is the physical act which is to be performed, the intent is the result the character would like to see, the stakes are the results if failure isn't met.

So, for example a player might state, "I'll silence the guard" (an announcement of intent), to which the GM might respond "How?". The player will then probably give announce details of the task, "I'll sneak up behind them and hit them with my sap." We now have enough information for the GM to set stakes and difficulties. The GM might for example set a difficulty of Expert [11], and state that the stakes are that enough noise will be made that the alarm will be sounded". Now at last the player can roll them bones, happy that whatever the outcome he'll be in a position to narrate what happens.

Having talked about how S7S is flawed I feel its only fair to say something about how it's awesome. S7S has an amazing setting perfect for a Swashbuckling game. Not only is the setting action packed, but its memorable, interesting and fun, filled with plot hooks and easy to get to grips with. S7S also has the best roleplaying ship to ship combat rules I have ever seen. In addition the S7S style dice mechanism is stunningly good in play producing some of the most fun I've had in a long time. It encourages players to reward each other for clever, stylish, fun or just plain awesome play. Suddenly everyone is encouraging everyone else and having a brilliant time as a result. If you have any issues with negativity at the table, this game will dispel it. At the moment I'm rating S7S as my game of the year (although there are still six month to go so something may beat it - but thats going to have to be a truely stunning game).

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Savage Tides No More?  

Posted by Whirly / R00kie in , , , ,

In about 2 hours I am going to really upset my players.

For the last 9 months we've been playing through the Savage Tides adventure path using Iron Heroes rules. About 3 months into it I began to question whether I could continue. I broached the possibility of continuing the campaign using a system which was tailored to telling the sort of story we were telling (i.e. something which wasn't so combat centric). The players were less than enthusiastic about this and I was forced to drop the idea (although in the process I did spend somewhere around 30 hours producing my Spirit of the Iron Heroes ruleset).

Since that day I have become more and more disillusioned with the game we are playing. The problems are down to both the system and the scenario and I will deal with both in turn:

  • The system is prep-heavy. Not just mildly prep-heavy but enormously prep-heavy. Even though I've got a prewritten adventure I have to look each and every monster up, work out what all their abilities do, and this takes far more work than it should. I can stat a minion fight in SotC in about 20 seconds. Stating a fight with a ship full of pirates and two named NPCs for last session took the better part of 90 minutes.
  • The character sheets are becoming increasingly complex, with more and more powers, point pools and strange rule sets which I need to understand, whilst managing to have nothing of any importance to the narrative anywhere on them.
  • Combats are getting longer and longer as the game goes on. Player damage and monster damage are not scaling in line with each other, meaning that combats are now taking an inordinate amount of time. Meanwhile social conflict by the rules is taking seconds. This means the two non-combat characters are getting seconds of limelight compared to the hours the combat characters are getting.
  • The adventure path is an implausible sequence of dungeon crawls - and I'm having to make extensive re-writes in order to produce a game with a sensible balance of delving and politicking. In fact I am spending much more time trying to re-write the adventure so that the various bits meet up than I would have to spend if I wrote entirely new material
  • The level of railroading in the original adventure path is ridiculous. As an example one of the adventures ends with a storm and a shipwreck. The adventure makes it clear that this will happen, and the next adventure is dependent on the players having just survived a wreck and having to make their way across the island. One of my players is a mage specialising in weather, water and air magic, with the ability to predict and control the weather. Another is specialised in repair magic. There is no way they would have encountered the storm by surprise, if they had they could have calmed it, and even if they had been shipwrecked they could have repaired the ship far quicker than they could have walked across a 400 mile wide island covered in jungle.

To be honest I cannot understand why the players are happy with it. One of the characters is a political demagogue, another a confidence trickster, and neither of them is actually getting to do almost anything. I'm also disappointed that dispite several conversations with them they haven't taken the hint that I am not happy with it.

Anyway, In 2 hours I'm going to give them two simple choice: We will make our way to the end of the current adventure which we will consider the end of the season. We will then take a break from it.

The first choice: Do we either give the game up for good, or will they allow me to give the remainder of the adventure path an extensive re-write. In fact this rewrite will probably consist of working out who all the key players are and what their motivations are, and what's actually going on - i.e. putting me in a position where I can plan each session based on the players actions and not some pre-written script.

As for the second choice: If we rejoin the action do they want to do so using FATE or Burning Wheel.

I feel bad about this. I know from talking to them that they are enjoying the game - a lot, but I feel that is largely due to the sheer amount of work I've had to put in to work around the issues with the system and the to fix the adventure. The simple fact is I am not enjoying it, and haven't really been enjoying it for about half a year now. Its become a chore and I' have better things to be doing with my time.

I wonder how they'll feel about Shab-al-Hiri Roach next week.

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Back after a long hiatus  

Posted by Whirly / R00kie

Its been a long time since I last felt a need to post anything. I will fill you in on all the things which have happened since my last post soon (I promise) but first I need to get something off my chest so I'm afraid my next post may come across as something of a rant.

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GFFE Phase 1 Results Now In  

Posted by Whirly / R00kie in , , , ,

The Phase one results are now in. The full results can be seen here:


The winning genre was:
  • E.E. "Doc" Smith style Space Opera, suggested by Ben Chapman.

The winning aspects were:
  • What tangled webs we weave, suggested by bachelornewtling
  • The Great Library, suggested by bachelornewtling
  • Action yields its own rewards, suggested by Whirly (me)

It was a close run contest - a single vote could have changed either poll.

I will try and get details about the next phases up as soon as possible. In it we need to come up with the three main protagonist groups this settings. As an example in the new Star Wars Trilogy the results would have been something like 'The Republic', "The Seperatists" and "The Sith". I need to work out the groups that make things happen. In the Dresden Files you could argue that the groups could be "The White Council", "The Faye Courts" and "The Black Council" (although this is very open to interpretation - Jim hasn't really let us in on who the true powers are yet).

Anyway, for these powerful groups I'm going to try to kick off a few discussions, because whatever three we pick are going to have to gel together - so the suggestions and poll method wont work.

Then in phase 3 we need to aspect the groups. Each group will get five aspects, but two of these aspects will be on their view of the other groups. So for example if the groups were Tau'ri, Jaffa, and Goa'uld, then the last two Jaffar aspects might be 'Distrustful of Tau'ri' and 'Hateful dependence on Goa'uld'.

Anyway I'll get more details up as soon as I can (but I need to do some actual work now - real life getting in the way)

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